Pop starts getting cool again…The hangover of conveyor-belt comedy-awful manufactured pap was still prominent in everyone’s minds in 2002. Who’d have thought it would take the puppeteering of Louis Walsh on the back of Popstars: The Rivals to reignite people’s imaginations at pop’s possibilities?The key catalyst at play here was the chap responsible for that weird vocoder effect on Cher’s ‘Believe’. Helmed by Brian Higgins, production house Xenomania would steer ‘proper pop music’ on course to become one of the defining buzz trends of the Noughties with a trend-bucking all-inclusive manifesto approach to their sound palette. JH

Six months before Biology was released, the Crazy Frog was at number one in the UK charts after becoming an overnight ringtone sensation/irritation. This is only worthy of mention because of the precedent it set: if a guileless ringtone – a piece of music designed to last no more than a few bars – can be a hit, what would happen when a well-oiled pop machine took on the form? Girls Aloud’s finest moment, that’s what. Sure, Biology’s three utterly disparate sections could all be songs in their own right, but the decision to cram them together into some attention-deficit shuffle-mode playlist is the genius here. Every thirty seconds, another section is cut down in its prime, replaced by an even better hook. This tumbling, speedy feeling of Sunny D-esque sensory overload is allowed to build for two minutes before we get to the chorus, at which point the track is so high on multi-flavoured spangly pop sherbet that the only option is a broad grin to acknowledge the nonsense. Call it mash-up culture, ringtone pop or just plain nuts, what can’t be avoided here is that Biology is both brilliantly original and unconventional – something that, from the land’s biggest pop group, is deliciously rare.

In the UK, they have become the emergency choice for artists in need of a hit. The production team formed by Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper has re-shaped the state of British pop thanks to their unique talent scouting skills. Higgins had his big break with Cher’s global smash “Believe”; since then Xenomania has been behind the hits of Girls Aloud, Sugababes, Annie and St. Etienne among many other pop starlettes.

Xenomania is a songwriting and production house based in Kent, England. It was founded by songwriter and producer Brian Higgins.

Since 1996, Xenomania have written, produced and remixed tracks for a string of successful artists including Girls Aloud, Pet Shop Boys, Sugababes, Dannii and Kylie Minogue, Saint Etienne, Cher, Gabriella Cilmi and many others.